Pierre Guyotat

Pierre Guyotat (9 January 1940 – 7 February 2020) was a French literary avant-garde writer who wrote fiction, non-fiction, and plays. He is best known for his 1967 novel Tombeau pour cinq cent mille soldats (Tomb for 500,000 Soldiers), about his experiences in the Algerian War, and his 1970 novel Eden, Eden, Eden, which was banned for its explicit content. Many of his novels are set in imaginary north African war zones. Idiotie (Idiocy, 2018) won the Prix Medicis.

Early life and education Pierre Guyotat was born on 9 January 1940 in Bourg-Argental, a small town in a mountainous area near Lyon. His father was a doctor, who aided local partisans during the occupation of France by the Nazis in World War II. He wanted to become a painter as a child, and admired Picasso and Matisse, who were still alive then. He also wrote poetry and some prose when he was a school-aged teenager.

Career Many of Guyotat's novels are set in imaginary north African war zones. Based on his ordeal as a soldier in the Algerian War, the book earned a cult reputation and became the subject of various controversies, mostly because of its omnipresent sexual obsessions and homoeroticism.

In 1968, Guyotat became a member of the French Communist Party, which he left in 1971.

Eden, Eden, Eden was published in 1970, with a preface by Michel Leiris, Roland Barthes, and Philippe Sollers. This book was banned from being publicised or sold to minors.

Coma was published in an English translation by Noura Wedell in July 2010. The second part of the book, Par la main dans les Enfers, Joyeux animaux de la misère II, was published in the October 2016.

Recognition Guyotat was awarded the Prix de la langue française in 2010.

In 2018, Guyotat's Idiotie (Idiocy) won the Prix Medicis.

In September 2020, an international project entitled Eden Eden Eden at 50 was organised by scholar, writer and museum executive Donatien Grau. The event, celebrating the 50th anniversary of Guyotat's book, comprised 50 readings around the world, by a diverse group of creatives, including artists Paul McCarthy and Kaari Upson; writer Chris Kraus; and rapper Abd al Malik. It also included a new film by Australian filmmaker Amiel Courtin-Wilson; a performance by artist Michael Dean; a reading by Philippe Parreno in Berlin; and a concert by Scott McCulloch in Tbilisi.

Many of his works have been performed on stage.

Death and legacy

In 2004, Guyotat donated his manuscripts to the Bibliothèque nationale de France (French National Library).

He died on 7 February 2020. "Body of the Text," transl. by Catherine Duncan, published in Polysexuality (Los Angeles, Semiotext(e), 1981). Eden, Eden, Eden, transl. by Graham Fox (London, Creation Books, 1995). Prostitution: An Excerpt, transl. by Bruce Benderson (New York, Red Dust, 1995). Tomb for 500,000 soldiers, transl. by Romain Slocombe (London, Creation Books, 2003). Coma, transl. by Noura Wedell (Los Angeles, Semiotext(e), 2010). Independence, transl. by Noura Wedell (Los Angeles, Semiotext(e), 2011). In the deep, transl. by Noura Wedell (Los Angeles, Semiotext(e), 2014).

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